The Refuge: Race for Survival

The Refuge by B&B Games Studio describes itself as a survival strategy board game and I agree with that, although the term “survival” may make you think it’s a long game. It isn’t. “Race” is the much more appropriate term. The game itself is for 2 – 6 players and lasts around 20 minutes per game. I was playing it with 2 other people and the games eventually got to about 15 minutes each once we got a good understanding of the game and strategy used for it, as well as what we each were looking to accomplish.

The Refuge was introduced on Kickstarter in September of 2016. It was successfully funded in the first 24 hours. The goal may seem low at $8,500, but its quite the accomplishment if you follow many other games attempted to be funded on Kickstarter. It was successfully funded in October at $31,830. After watching the videos on the Kickstarter page, I can see why this was funded so quickly.

1.Zombies have great appeal to gamers.2.The game has very few components. A board, 1 deck of cards, easily sorted minis.3.The rules and goal are simple to follow allowing for a quick and easy understanding of the game.

The game when being opened up was nicely organized. There are male and female zombies and each are in their own large zip-lock bag. The cards were all together in one package and the players were sorted out as well. The player minis are all different colors while the zombies are grey making it very easy to sort them out. There is also only one type of zombie in the game so the mini you chose doesn’t effect how the game is played.The minis have nice details but they were easily bending causing some issues for them to stay standing up. This is easily rectified by gently bending the minis back into place.

Setting the game up was easy. Dump out the zombies in a pile, give each person a character, then shuffle and deal. One of the quickest games to setup which is a huge relief. Other games I am used to playing can take up to 30 minutes or longer to setup! This game took less than 10 minutes the first time playing and less than 5 minutes each time after. This made consecutive game plays for reviewing this so much easier and won a lot of points with us.

The game is easy to play. On your turn you get to do one of 3 things1.Draw a card2.Play a cardMove your character forward, backward, left or right. No diagonal movements simplifying the game play more.

The cards in this game give you ability to kill zombies when they enter your space, or you enter theirs, jump over tiles, move diagonally, steal cards from players, interrupt their turns and win the game.

The only card we played wrong at first was the Stopwatch card where you can only use it on your opponents turn. You stop their turn and take one turn of your own. This card has to be played at the beginning of their turn before they do anything. The reason we were playing this card wrong is because it doesn’t say on the card it has to be played at the beginning of the turn and in the rule book there is a small note in the description, but its after the description instead of before. A small change of where that was placed would have prevented that, but it only happened twice before we realized it. The rulebook is small and there is a small reference page everyone can read so it was noticed very fast.

The Refuge was fun and got better the more we played. We got several full games in within an hour which was great and allowed us keep the adrenaline and fun of the game going. We played with three people, but would love to eventually get a full 6 person group going for this. Trying to out think the other players, figuring out what they were going to do and the fast pace of the game really makes it a great group game. Especially since it is up to 6 players.